Jeff Sessions says DOJ will ‘protect the rights of all transgender persons’

Yesterday, DOJ Pride, a group of LGBTQ people and supporters in the Department of Justice, announced that they would be holding an event to honor DOJ employees and a student who has worked to fight for LGBT equality.

The move was read as a rebuke against Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s actions this year, which included rescinding Obama-era protections for transgender students. The student that DOJ Pride is honoring – Gavin Grimm – would have had his case to use the appropriate bathroom at his public school heard by the Supreme Court if Sessions had not rescinded those protections.

Yesterday, at a staff meeting, a DOJ intern asked Sessions about how the White House and the DOJ haven’t acknowledged Pride Month. He responded by citing the DOJ Pride event positively.

“We are going to have a pride group, in this very room, I think next week, I believe it is, and so that’s perfectly appropriate, and we will protect and defend and celebrate that — and protect the rights of all transgender persons.”

He went on to say that he has asked the civil rights division of the DOJ to look into the murder of a transgender person.

“For example, I received a letter expressing concern about the sudden transgender persons who had been killed, and concern about it, and so I, first thing, directed the civil rights division to look into those … to see if there was any uniform attack, or if there was just a uniform hostility that would result in these murders, and to review each one of those cases that were sent to me. And they have done that, and I think it’s possible that they’re going to re-open one and solve it, as a result of that.”

He didn’t name the victim and the DOJ did not say who the victim was when later asked.

In addition to rolling back protections for transgender students…

Read full story from Source: Jeff Sessions says DOJ will ‘protect the rights of all transgender persons’